How did US forces in the Philippines react to the news of Pearl Harbor?

When did the Japanese first attack positions in the Philippines?

Where can I find photos and images of the Japanese bombing of the Cavite Navy Yard?

How did radar contribute to the defense of the Philippines? How did secrecy about radar contribute to US setbacks?

What was it like to be overrun by enemy forces?

Where can I find a summary of the Bataan Death March?

Description:

A well illustrated 48 page pamphlet lacking either table of contents or index describing operations and Marine units in the Philippines prior the occupation by Japanese forces in World War II. It may offer some inspiration for similar battles in other times and other worlds.

What was it like to be a member of the Filipino Resistance under Japanese occupation?

What was it like to be on Coast Guard Picket Duty during World War II?

How would a Coast Guardsman react to finding Nazi saboteurs on American soil?

How were bed-wetters treated on some Coast Guard vessels?

Description:

This page links to histories from a number of eras. Scroll down to World War II to find over four dozen oral histories from the men and women who served in the Coast Guard in a number of different capacities during World War II. Some of the histories are illustrated with photographs and/or drawings.

Search Tip:

To search for an oral history that matches topics that you are interested in, visit your favorite search engine and do a search in the form of:
[your search terms] inurl:history/weboralhistory
If you use [”bed wetters” inurl:history/weboralhistory], you will retrieve the one oral history that deals with this topic. Note that searching will bring up any oral history that matches your terms, not just oral histories from World War II.

The above search on retrieved items from the Coast Guard Oral history site as of December 2013. If results from other sites appear in your search, do the search again and add site:uscg.mil to the end of it.

What was it like to be alone in the water knowing the enemy was hunting you?

What was the range of an SBD-6 Divebomber?

Where can I find a description of close air support and how it was received by ground troops?

Where can I find a picture of Filipino guerrillas?

Description:

A 34 page work providing background on Marine aviation activity in the Philippines during World War II. Includes photographs, maps and a table of aircraft used by US Marines units during the campaign. Also quotes from first person accounts of battles and of being shot down.

Where can I locate records on nurses and volunteers who served during the Insurrection?

Description:

Mostly a guide to located offline records relating to the Philippine Insurrection. First part of the article is a brief account of the conflict and examples of available records are offered. Accessing the records themselves will require a visit to a National Archives office.

List of resources related to naval operations during the Spanish American War. Some material in this collection of special interest include:

Battle of Manila Bay

USS Maine, destruction of

“War Plans and Preparation and Their Impact on the U.S. Naval Operation in Spanish American War”

The material on the USS Maine describes the several investigations done over the years and links to images of the ship, the Maine’s casualty list and list of survivors. The “War Plans” article provides a good overview of the ups and downs of Navy strength from the Civil War to the time with the War With Spain, including specific force breakdowns.

How did US authorities deal with an outbreak of Bubonic Plague in Manila in 1899?

How many US soldiers were there in China in 1923?

Where can I locate specifications and test results for late 19th weapons such as the Skoda 5-Pounder Rabid-Fire Gun?

Description:

Spanning from 1863 – 1949, these reports cover a variety of topics. Sometimes they have details about conflicts the United States was engaged in at the time. For example, volume one, part 10 of the 1900 report (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b2980393) provides a US view of civil affairs under its occupation government in the Philippines.

Sometimes they cover other matters. For example, the 1923 report (http://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015024071535) concerned itself chiefly with the economics of national defense and included comparisons of US military spending to those of other countries.

Nearly all of the annual reports will have statistics on the size, composition, and rough deployment of the armed forces. Most years also have an helpful index that might generate story ideas, such as the Bubonic Plague outbreak detailed in the 1900 report. The volumes from Hathitrust are also fully searchable.

In the digitized copies linked here, there is a gap from 1941 to 1947. As of this writing, I’m unsure whether this means the volumes were not published or simply not digitized.

This site is a gateway to searchable collections pertaining to culture and history from the Library of Congress that seem to be organized by organizational unit. Some of the notable collections that might help frame story backgrounds include (Descriptions from web site):

Selections from the Naxi Manuscript Collection — This collection features documents that detail the unique cosmology of the Naxi people of the Yunnan Province in southern China. The Naxi shamanistic priests use a distinctive pictographic writing system that is similar to the ancient Egyptian and Mayan writing systems and is the only living pictographic language in the world. This online presentation features 185 manuscripts, a 39½-foot funerary scroll and an annotated catalog of the entire collection.

Selections of Arabic, Persian, and Ottoman Calligraphy — This collection presents 373 Arabic calligraphy sheets, ranging from the 9th to the 19th centuries, including examples of calligraphic art – illuminated panels, albums, and poems. In addition to individual calligraphy sheets, the presentation has essays on Ottoman and Persian calligraphic styles, an in-depth look at Qur’anic calligraphic fragments, and an essay discussing some of the Library’s notable Arabic script calligraphy sheets and illuminations.

American Colonization Society Collection Maps of Liberia, 1830-1870 (Liberia) — this collection of Liberia maps includes twenty examples from the American Colonization Society (ACS), organized in 1817 to resettle free black Americans in West Africa. These maps show early settlements in Liberia, indigenous political subdivisions, and some of the building lots that were assigned to settlers. This on-line presentation also includes other nineteenth-century maps of Liberia.

Puerto Rico at the Dawn of the Modern Age: Nineteenth- and Early-Twentieth-Century Perspectives (Puerto Rico) — this collection portrays the early history of the commonwealth of Puerto Rico through first-person accounts, political writings, and histories. Among the topics it highlights are the land and its resources, relations with Spain, the competition among political parties, reform efforts, and recollections by veterans of the Spanish-American War. The materials in the collection were published between 1831 and 1929 and consist of 39 political pamphlets, 18 monographs, and 1 journal.

The Spanish-American War in Motion Pictures (Spain, Cuba, and the Philippines) — Motion pictures of the Spanish-American War and the subsequent Philippine Revolution produced between 1898 and 1901 are featured in this presentation. The complete collection will include 68 motion pictures and a selection of sound recordings related to the war. The Spanish-American War was the first U.S. war in which the motion picture camera played a role. These films were made by the Edison Manufacturing Company and the American Mutoscope & Biograph Company and consist of actualities filmed in the U.S., Cuba, and the Philippines, showing troops, ships, notable figures, and parades, as well as reenactments of battles and other war-time events.

Posters: Spanish Civil War Posters (Spain) — 124 posters. 1936-1939. Posters sponsored by Republican and anti-Republican groups, trade unions, Catalonian nationalists, and international factions, on themes relating to the causes, conduct, and consequences of the civil war. For potential copyright related reasons, only the thumbnail sized images may display offsite; larger copies are viewable from the research center computers in The Library of Congress.

Most of these collections can be browsed by topic or title in addition to being searchable by keyword. In addition most of collections also feature useful supplemental materials including essays about either the collection itself or the relevant country or time period. If you’re considering reproducing this material in your book or on your website, be sure to check the “Rights and Reproductions” page of each collection. These will give you guidance but not absolute protection. Even for collections with no known rights restrictions, the Library of Congress will usually stamp “Rights Assessment is Your Responsibility” and the bottom of item records.